


Unwell

by AquaWolfGirl



Series: Aqua's One Shots [2]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Caring, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Just Let The Kids Love Each Other Please, May be a little OOC, Post-TLJ, Sick Fic, Total Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2019-03-02 16:04:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13321683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AquaWolfGirl/pseuds/AquaWolfGirl
Summary: Jakku was cold, but nothing compared to Hoth. While staying at the old Rebel base, Rey catches a cold, and someone is a huge worry wart over the woman who denied his offer.





	Unwell

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I was supposed to go to Disney World, but ended up getting bronchitis instead. And what better way to beat bronchitis than to make Rey get it as well? Just a fluff-filled one shot, honestly, because pain and sick don't a good mix make. I'm not entirely familiar with writing in canon (I mostly do AUs), so forgive me if it is a bit OOC in the context of TLJ. Enjoy!

It starts with a sniffle. 

All right, so what? Their new base is on some snow-covered planet. Her body isn’t used to the cold, at least not of this kind. Jakku was cold, but at least there was sun. This planet, whatever it is, is cold, and grey, and she finds she’s shivering more often than she isn’t. 

It’s normal for her body to take time to get used to the cold, the medics tell her, and they shoot her up with a booster to hopefully keep her nose from dripping too badly. 

And then comes the fever. 

She wakes up one morning in the small room that she was given, and she is frigid. The thick blanket that they gave her isn’t enough to combat the cold, and the heat system is still not doing its job. Sure, she repaired it, but she’s repaired it five times over the past three days. Something’s wrong, to be sure, but it’s the only one she has. 

She turns over, shivering as she looks towards the heater that’s supposed to be blasting hot air over her, and she frowns as she sees the light’s on. It is blasting air, or so it says. Risking losing her fingers to the apparent frostbite, Rey reaches out and-

She inhales sharply as the heat against her fingers nearly scalds them, and she turns back over to quickly press her fingertips to the cold metal of the wall just beside her. The pain is eased, and she looks back to the heater with a frown. So it is working, she’s just … cold.  
“Achoo!” 

She sneezes, and it’s strong enough that it hurts. Something rattles in her chest, and she sniffles, her nose insisting upon leaking like a busted coolant tank in the fighters she used to raid. 

She can’t be sick. To be sick means to be tired, and to be tired means she can’t work as well. It’s an equation, a code that she observed even when she was younger. No work, no portions. Of course, that doesn’t apply anymore, given she can eat what she wants when she wants and she’s allowed as much as she’d like as long as it’s within reason, considering the Resistance’s resources, but the thought is the same. If she’s sick, she can’t work, and she needs to work, she needs to do her part for the Resistance – what little there is left – by lifting ice-covered rocks that caved in on the old base.

She needs to work, she needs to help, she needs to-

“Rest. You’re more than welcome to stay here, if you’d like, but I know your quarters are more probably more comfortable.”

The medic, a woman with warm eyes and a kind smile, moves away to grab some gauze, the anti-virus now in Rey’s system.

Chewie roars from the side, and Rey sighs. “No, I’ll stay on base, but thank you,” she says to his offer of sleeping on the Falcon, instead. While it’s warmer, the bunk is smaller, and the mattress thinner. As long as the heater keeps working…

She can do that. She can keep it working. After all, she’s fixed more hopeless things. 

Back on Jakku, she reminds herself, before the anger and emptiness of the lack of him can consume her. She fixed more hopeless things back on Jakku.

“Thank you for the anti-virus,” she mutters before pushing off of the cold metal bench, reaching for the heavy coat again and wrapping it around her before she makes her way back through the walls coated in ice. 

-

Sleep is both elusive and all consuming. One moment she’s nearly crying in frustration because she can’t manage to turn her mind off, and the next she’s waking up and wondering how much time has passed. The medic said she would be tired, said that rest would be the best thing at this point. They have supplies to treat life-threatening wounds, but in terms of common illnesses, they’re running low. She’ll just have to let it pass with the aid of the anti-virus. 

Sniffling, she curls further into the blankets, a few of which she doesn’t remember being there before, but smell like metal and age. Chewie, she thinks, closing her eyes and nuzzling the soft top one. 

She knows immediately when he’s there, perhaps a few moments after she closes her eyes again. It’s like everything has stopped, her heartbeat, time, the galaxy around them. It’s just them. 

“I don’t want to do this, not right now,” she says, trying to make it sharp and almost biting so as to be as unwelcoming as possible, but she hasn’t spoken in hours, and those few words sends her into a coughing fit. Her eyes remain closed, but he’s there. She knows it. 

He says nothing. Of course he wouldn’t. Of course the Supreme Leader of the First Order wouldn’t have anything to say to the hope of the Resistance. The anger and emptiness returns full-force, and she looks up, harsh words on her lips when she sees him. 

He’s sitting. Sitting on something. She can’t see his surroundings, but she can see him, and the worry in his warm brown eyes. Worry. He’s worried about her.  
“You’re cold.”

That is what he says? After what happened, after everything, that is what he observes? Not the aching in her chest, not the emptiness that is his side of the bond, the dull pain it leaves whenever she shuts him out? Cold. He notices she’s cold. 

She notices it, now, too, actually. She notices when she exhales, a white plume leaves her lips. A quick glance to the heater reveals the light is off, and she can’t hear its loud clanging and humming. 

“Blasted heater broke again,” she hisses, reaching to bang her fist against it only to result in an empty, metallic clang and a bruised hand, but no heat. 

Growling lowly in irritation, and sniffling miserably, she turns to look back at the Supreme Leader, only to find him gone. 

She’s not sure if she should be surprised to find she wants him to come back.

-

“This makes no sense.”

Poe Dameron stands with one hand in his dark curls and the other on his hip, staring down at the apparent mystery shipment of new heaters. There are boxes and boxes of them, Rey notices. Enough for every room in the Resistance, enough to fill her small quarters to the brim and then some.

“Someone knows we’re here,” Leia says, watching as another box is opened, the sleek heater pulled from its confines before being wheeled off to be plugged in somewhere. 

“Obviously,” Poe replies, and Rey has to smile a bit at the way his curls are now sticking up when he pulls his hand away. “But why would they send us heaters, and not food? Why not ammunition, why not fighters?”

“Be grateful for what we got, Dameron,” Leia tells him, her voice a bit sharp, scolding the captain.

“General, BB-8 has scanned every one of the shipment boxes, and not a single one contains anything of danger. Well, aside from the potentially explosive heating unit inside each of the-“

“Thank you, 3P0,” Leia says, and Rey’s smile broadens at the exasperated tone of the General. 

-

“Are you warmer, now?” 

“You know where we are.” She sits up, and the world tips, something on the right side of her head throbbing painfully at the shift in gravity. Her nose is no better, and her throat is now worse. Her cough has deepened, as well, her chest rattling with something thick and awful. But she is warmer, yes. 

He’s sitting, again, hunched over. For such a large man, the way he’s sitting makes him look so small, and she watches him as his gaze lowers to whatever floor his throne – she assumes it’s a throne, or a makeshift one – is sitting on. 

“Yes,” he answers simply.

“You know how many people we have, you know that we have no chance, but you haven’t attacked?” she asks. In fact, reports have come in about the First Order’s main ship being on the other side of the galaxy, now. It would take hours for them to get here even at lightspeed, and that’s time enough to evacuate. 

“You know why we haven’t.”

Her, something in her heart says. He hasn’t attacked because of her.

“You sent enough heaters for there to be at least five in every room,” she tries to tell him, but she gets to ‘heaters’ before she starts to cough again. They’re deep, painful things, and they have her bent in half, her hand covering her mouth in some attempt to contain them, to control them.

“Don’t speak.” 

She can hear the worry, now, it isn’t just in his eyes. His voice shakes with it, and he sounds like the sight and sound of her coughing is physically paining him instead of her. 

Perhaps it is. 

“I’m fine,” she tries to say, but it comes out hoarse and raspy. It doesn’t matter, anyway. When she looks up, he is gone.

-

“What part of ‘rest’ do you not understand?”

Poe sounds vaguely amused behind her as she stands, wrapped up in two thick coats, her head pounding with the effort of moving rocks away from a collapsed passageway. It had been so easy a few days ago, but now she’s moving one rock at a time. It’s still faster than it would be with man power, the rocks too heavy for most of the Resistance to lift, and she wouldn’t ask Chewie to lift over one hundred of them. But it’s slower going than she’d like, considering they need access to several of the power panels in the corridors that lie beyond. 

“The sooner we get this-“ she starts, but the dryness of the air and the sudden rush of cold in her lungs has her coughing again. They’re deep, painful things that have her hunched over, and through the coats she can feel a hand rubbing at her back. Her first thought is Poe, but then she can hear the hum of machinery, so much quieter than the rattling of the fuel and power lines in the old Rebel base. 

“What are you doing?”

The worry she heard in his voice has gotten stronger, and she tries to catch her breath, but the cold air leaves her lungs aching so hard she feels tears pool in her eyes. Everything hurts, and a sob wracks her frame. 

The feeling of a warm, bare hand cupping her cheek and a thumb wiping away her tears has her sobbing even harder.

“You were in your quarters before.”

It’s almost a question, and so she nods.

“Get someone to help you back.”

“I need to lift these rocks,” she breathes, but the words send her into another fit, and this time she’s sobbing at the end of it. Why won’t it stop?! “I need to-“

“No,” he says firmly, like an order, and she feels his other hand stroke her hair back from her face as she’s bent over. She clutches at her chest as though she could stop it, if she just held everything together, the coughs would stop-

“She’s feverish, she’s talking to rocks, we need to get her to the medbay!”

Poe’s voice cuts through like a knife, and the warm touch of Ben’s hands leaves so suddenly she looks up, expecting to see him there. But he isn’t. All she sees is a wall of ice-covered rocks, and she feels a smaller hand on her back, guiding her away from the piddly amount of work she’d done so far. 

Leia is standing there, wrapped up in her own collection of coats, grey and silver and plush near her cheeks. Her skin is flushed pink with cold, but her eyes are as bright as ever, and Rey can feel the General’s gaze on her, curious and almost knowing. 

“I just need sleep,” Rey insists, feeling Poe’s hand on her waist as he tries to guide her to the medbay. “Please, Poe, just take me to my room.”

“We need someone to check your-“

“We don’t have much to help her in the medbay, Dameron. Get her back, and get the heaters on.”

The General knows, of that she’s sure, and she would embrace the woman if she could, but she’s being whisked away back to her room by the captain, his hand rubbing up and down her waist like it will help warm her. “Maker, sweetheart, we don’t need those rocks lifted that badly,” he mutters. 

_Sweetheart._

She likes Poe. She does. He’s kind, and he has the makings of a leader, but he’s reckless. And she’s never been one for reckless.

“Don’t call me that,” she mutters, and where she expects him to let go of her, instead he just squeezes her in a half-hug. 

“All right,” he says. “All right.”

Her room has never felt so welcome. Poe herds her in, and she watches as he guides her towards the small cot before he walks around to the four heaters that are scattered throughout the small room, turning each of them on. They start up with a hum, the sound making her head hurt even more, but at least she won’t see her breath anymore. 

“Okay, got those,” Poe mumbles, and when he turns to her, she can see the dark circles under his eyes, can see the weariness in his face. The cold is sucking the life out of everyone, it seems. “You hungry? Thirsty? I can go get you something?”

Already she can feel the bond, or the Force, or whatever they call it – there is pressure on the other side. “No, I’m fine, thank you.” Her breath plumes in front of her, curling wisps of white. 

“You sure? I can get you some hot chocolate?”

Even more pressure. 

“I’m fine.” 

“All right, kid, then get some rest.” 

As soon as he is gone, the loud hum of the heaters dulls away, and there are warm hands upon her face. 

“Your skin feels like ice.”

“Everything hurts…” she breathes.

Jakku’s air was cold, but not like this. It never felt like ice in her lungs, even when she did get sick. She could go about her day without feeling like her face was frozen, but she can’t say the same about whatever hell this planet is. His hands are helping, though, and despite everything telling her to push him away, to be angry, to force him to reconsider his choice-

He is warm, and she is so very, very cold. 

She can blame it on whatever fever she may have later, she thinks, as she closes her eyes and leans into his touch. She can feel tears leave the corners of her eyes, feels his thumbs brush them away. 

“Don’t speak.”

She nods as best as she can, her face still cupped by his hands. Speaking makes it worse, she knows. She’s more than fine with not speaking. She tries to take a deeper breath, guiding the air through her throat in such a way that it works around the mass in her chest. It still hurts, but it doesn’t make her cough, at least, and she feels his hands come down to her throat, his skin feeling hot against hers. 

“How does that feel?”

His voice is always so soft, almost dulcet, and she takes another breath. “Good,” she whispers.

“Don’t speak, just nod.”

His fingers come to the snaps on her coat, and in the silence of the room, the sound seems so loud. She tries to listen to the sound of the heaters, but all she can hear is a dull hum over the shifting of fabric. She doesn’t protest to his shedding of the outer coat, says nothing as he unzips the top of the second. She takes a deep, shuddery breath as his hands slip beneath the high neck to touch her collar, his palms pressing against her bare skin, fingers spreading beneath the grey shirt she’s wearing underneath the two coats. 

“You’re warm.”

“Fever?” she questions. 

“Maybe a low one,” he mutters, sounding almost thoughtful, and she sighs. Somehow, even with the outer coat beside her, she does feel warmer. And, when she focuses on the heat of his hands against her skin, it’s harder to remember how much her chest aches. 

She says nothing as he continues to hold his hands against her skin, moving back to her throat after a few moments, and then pressing his warm palms to her cheeks again. The heaters must be working, now, because when she exhales through her lips, there’s no longer a plume of white in front of her. 

The night before was awful. Coughing fits plagued her, and she would be wrenched from sleep only to be pushed right into a chest-rattling series of coughs. She can feel exhaustion tugging at her, her eyes closed as Ben shifts his hands down the thin material of her shirt, his fingers spreading across her upper back. 

This isn’t the Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, she thinks, his thumbs rubbing small circles along her sore muscles. This is Ben. 

He’s still there. There is still light in him. 

She’s fading, but she doesn’t want to be. Much to her embarrassment, he pulls his hands from her back, and a whine leaves her lips. She doesn’t think she’s ever heard him laugh, but she hears it – the slightest sound, only half of a chuckle, but it’s a laugh all the same, and she feels his hands return to her back, rubbing gently. 

Time, like it always has been with him, becomes fluid. She has no idea how long has passed since Poe left, how long the heaters have been on, how long she’s been sitting up with Ben’s hands pressing to her shoulders, to her throat, to her collarbone, to her cheeks. She knows the world goes sideways, at some point, his hands never leaving her shoulders even as her head finds the rough, practically flat pillow of the cot. 

She fights and fights and fights sleep, feeling his fingers rubbing into the tight muscles of her upper back, wanting just a few more seconds, a few more moments of bliss, but the inky black of exhaustion eventually wins. She expects to hear the hum of the heaters again as she falls asleep, and waits with dread for the moment his hands leave her skin, but they don’t. And just before sleep takes her, she wonders if he is able to stay.

-

Apparently he is. 

Perhaps it’s the Force, or perhaps it’s her will alone, but she wakes up what must be hours later, and he is curled around her almost protectively. 

The room is dry from the heaters, her lips chapped and mouth drier than Jakku. But she can feel his arm draped across her body, and looks down at him. She hadn’t noticed it before, but he’s not in the woven tunic, or the arm guards. It’s a softer, thinner shirt, still black, as is to be expected, but it must be some First Order sleep shirt of some sort.

He’s awake. She feels his hand move, looks down to watch his fingers spread across the poor excuse for a mattress. He pushes himself up, and reaches for one of the water canteens nearby. She closes her eyes again as she hears the metallic sound of the cap unscrewing from the bottle, and then there is a hand cupped beneath her neck, helping her sit up ever so slightly. Sweet, cool water is held to her lips, and she drinks eagerly. Perhaps a little too eagerly, she thinks, as she coughs. But it’s not nearly as bad as it was before, it’s not the same violent fits she’s been having. Still, his hand comes to her back, and she notices that the coat she’d been wearing before is tossed to the ground. 

She’s much, much warmer now, and she takes a deep breath as best as she can, feeling his fingers brush her hair from her sweat-slicked brow. The heaters are going full force, and she wonders if there’s any danger of the ice around the metal walls melting. 

She doesn’t question how he could reach for the canteen, doesn’t wonder how strong the bond must be now. She just leans into his touch as he cups her cheek, and sighs as she realizes breathing no longer hurts her lungs. 

It all goes to bantha shit when there are full, soft lips pressed to her brow, and the tenderness of the kiss has her breath hitching in her throat. The rhythm she had to keep from coughing is broken, and she starts hacking again, her hand coming to her chest as she feels his hand on her back, rubbing soothingly. 

“Rey?”

Finn’s voice comes through the metal of the wall, and her head snaps up as Ben’s hand leaves her back. “Wait-“ she tries, but the word just starts another coughing fit. The heat pressed against the right side of her body is suddenly gone, and the overwhelming urge to cry hits her like a blaster bolt as the door is opened. Within moments there is another hand on her back, but it’s not the one she wants, Maker, no. 

“Sh, sh, it’s okay,” Finn tries, sounding almost panicked as tears start to flow down her cheeks. 

It’s not, she wants to insist, but speaking is impossible. It’s not.

-

“I had to go.”

The phrase doesn’t comfort her, but his hands rubbing at her back do. They’re beneath the grey t-shirt she’s changed into, the fabric rucked up around her breast band as he massages the muscles that have been clenched and tensed a few too many times thanks to the coughing fits. Her eyes stay closed as she breathes him in, the two of them almost flush together on the creaky cot. 

“General Hux-“

“Hugs.”

“What?”

“Hugs,” she mutters weakly. “That’s what Poe calls him.”

There is silence from the man lying beside her, before there’s a snort of laughter so sudden and unexpected that her eyes snap open and she tries to look up at him. They’re too close, though, and the height difference is such that she finds herself looking at his throat instead. 

Ben is here, she thinks. Ben is here and laughing at the nickname Poe gave General Hux. Ben is here with bare hands and sleep pants and with her head tucked up under his chin. This is Ben. This is what she wants.

This is what she’s wanted for a while, now. 

It repeats for four more nights. Once, he has to go sooner than expected, but she wakes up with a dark blanket over her, so much warmer and so much softer than the rough, hole-ridden ones that had been left on the Rebel base. She knew the First Order spared no expense, but to have that apply to their blankets, too? She has to hide it under the cot whenever she has visitors, but the knowing look of the General when the older woman sees the corner of black hastily shoved underneath the pile of dark green and grey tells Rey she isn’t as good of a liar as she thought she was. 

The fifth night, she barely coughs at all. The soreness in her back is almost gone, but Ben continues to massage the bare skin anyway, and she finds she sleeps better with him. She breathes more easily, and she is much warmer in the little metal room. She ends up turning two of the heaters off, the body heat of the man beside her enough to keep her from shivering in the middle of the night. 

“You need to leave,” he tells her, in the morning, after they’ve both woken and she’s had water, his hand resting on the small of her back and fingers rubbing circles into her skin.

“I’m not joining-“ she starts, her voice hardened because she knew this was coming, she knew he would ask-

“Someone in your system gave Hux information.”

She sits up so suddenly the top of her head nearly hits his chin, and she stares wide-eyed down at Ben. “How much time do we have?”

“We’re across the galaxy. A day, perhaps a few more hours.”

“I need to tell the General,” she breathes, and she doesn’t question the fact that she has to climb over his presence in order to reach for her boots. 

There is silence from Ben. “General?”

“Your mother!” Rey insists, turning to him. “I need to tell your mother!” 

His wide-eyed gaze and slack mouth tells her something, but she has no idea what as she grabs her boots and yanks them on, not even bothering with socks even though she knows she should. But they need to prepare, they need to start packing, they need to start evacuating, they need-

The low hum of the Supreme Leader’s ship is replaced with the annoying buzz of her heaters, and when she looks up from tying her left boot, he is gone.

-

There are a few ships left over from the old Rebel base, but not many. Still, they start up even with the cold, and Rey watches as Leia orders the few Resistance fighters left to put as many people who can fly X-wings into the X-wings so they at least have some fire power should something go wrong. 

The Falcon is loaded up with as many supplies as it can carry, the old smuggler hatches filled with medbay supplies and ammunition. To Rey’s surprise and amusement, Leia went around and banged her fist on hollow hatches, Chewie following behind the General and opening them for the members of the Resistance who were holding the supplies. 

“Han told me where everything was, and I never forgot,” Leia tells her with a smile, and Rey makes a note to ask the woman later so that she can memorize the compartments, too. 

The Porg that has since become inseparable to Chewie is bundled up and tucked into an alcove, the bird squawking as Rey walks by to get the Falcon up and running. There’s no sign of any First Order ships as they leave the frozen planet behind, and she only coughs a few times as they go to light speed in hopes of finding another base in the Outer Rim.

“Chewie, I can’t find any caf, you must’ve rearranged it. Can you either make me some, or tell me where it is?”

The Wookie roars and gets up from the copilot’s. Rey’s entirely not surprised to see Leia settle into it out of the corner of her eye, and she can see the General’s smirk even in her peripherals. 

“… do you think there’s hope?”

It’s such a loaded question, she knows, and she has to consider her answer carefully-

“Yes.”

The word falls from her lips immediately, and she keeps her gaze on the stars they’re flying through as she feels Leia’s hand come and cover hers, squeezing her fingers gently. 

Yes. She would say there’s hope. Not much, but enough.

-

The next time she feels him, they’re on a planet with plenty of green, and the air is hot and moist. Her cough still lingers, but the intensity of them has lessened, and she’s sitting and watching the rain from the ramp of the Falcon, the hangar doors open and the rain pouring down. 

She knows as soon as there is silence that he is there. 

“You’re feeling better.”

She feels his hand upon her lower back, knows he’s beside her, knows he’s watching the rain, too. “I am.”

He must not have much time. He doesn’t linger, he doesn’t stay to talk. He doesn’t say anything about his mother, and she doesn’t thank him for the tip off that saved what little there is of the Resistance. He does have time, though, to press a kiss to the top of her head, and she has time to lean against him for the briefest of moments, his lips lingering for a moment before he’s gone, the deafening sound of the rain coming back so loud and so quickly that she nearly gets a headache from it. 

Chewie roars from somewhere behind her, something about her being hungry, and she smiles at the Wookie’s question.

“You’re going to get sick again if you stand there, you know!” Leia calls, but there is a teasing tone to her voice, and Rey’s soft smile broadens into a grin.

The entire family is worried about her wellbeing, it seems. Mother, son, and Wookie. 

As she turns to go back inside the hangar, she wonders if being sick again would really be the worst thing.


End file.
